How we calculate our food waste figure (Central Europe)

Scope and Definitions

The methodology outlined below is used to calculate the total tonnes of food wasted in our Central European operations for the full Tesco financial year2018/19. The information provided is in conformance with the Food Loss and Waste Accounting Standard (FLW Standard).

Timeframe

The published figure represents the food wasted in our full financial year 2018/19. This year, this includes 52 weeks, from 25th February 2018 to 23rd February 2019 inclusive.

Store Location and Type

The scope of this calculation covers food waste arising only from our depots and stores in Central Europe (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia). Food waste arising in Tesco owned and managed Bistro & Grills was included. Other food waste arising in customer restaurants and staff canteens in our stores and depots are out of scope, as is any food waste arising in operations owned by Tesco upstream in the supply chain, such as haulage wastage and committed crop wastage.

The calculation only covers our operations. Therefore, waste arising at our suppliers’ sites and from third party counters in Tesco stores is not included.

Some individual products were excluded in other Categories where they were clearly not food, for example: books, glassware.

Data Sources

In order to calculate the amount of food wasted each year we record the following data in our stores and depots.

Retail waste: This dataset contains the number of retail units wasted and the total value (£) of such waste per item, split by waste type –

DAM waste: products that are damaged in store, whether on the shop floor or in storage.

OOC waste: Products that exceed the ‘Best before’ or ‘Use by’ date and can no longer be sold.

Product Write Off waste: Products that are not suitable for sale. For example, the supplier has sent a request to withdraw the product as it is not safe for consumption.

Exceptional Events waste: Products that are damaged during an exceptional event. For example, this waste could be caused by a fridge breakdown or flood.

Clear-as-you-go: waste arising from clearance events.

Returns: customer returns that can no longer be sold.

All waste data is provided as negative units. These are multiplied by minus one for this to be reported as a positive figure.

Depot waste: This dataset contains the number of depot units wasted and the total value (£) of such waste per item. Depot waste figures are reported as a mixture of positive and negative totals. Negative figures are ‘losses’, i.e. waste. Positive figures are single items that have been retrieved from wasted packs (e.g. individual cartons retrieved from a broken case). The total waste per item is the sum of losses and gains multiplied by minus one, to align these data with other datasets.

Product data: This dataset contains the contents weight and the packaged weight per item. Note that where duplicates are found, a conservative estimate is taken and the highest weight is used.

Store Donations data: This dataset contains the number of retail units wasted and the total value (£) of such waste per item, split by waste type –

Donations to food banks, local and national charities: donation of food for human consumption.

Other donations: donations to other entities, for example food donations to zoos for animal consumption.

Note that this year data for donations to animal feed include 60 tonnes of food given to colleagues. This was food surplus arising from the trial of new sandwich lines over the summer and that was donated to colleagues in store at the end of the day.

Methodology

The bullet points below explain how we have calculated our total food waste tonnage for the full year 2018/19:

Included in the scope of our calculation is any food that has not been sold in our stores and depots. The non-food categories mentioned above are removed at this stage.

The number of units wasted per item is converted into a weight measured in tonnes by multiplying the number of units wasted by the per unit weight*.

We perform a ‘bottom up’ calculation from the waste tonnages for individual products (e.g. Gala Apples), to the commercial food category (e.g. Produce), to our entire Central European operations.

Waste tonnages are summed to obtain totals by category and for our entire Central European operations.

We used this calculation method for 98% of the waste products (by weight) from our own operations – in our depots and within our stores.

The remaining 2% of waste by weight (equivalent to 2% of total units wasted) occurs in products for which a weight is not available (this could include items such as baguettes in our bakery or food in our deli counters), or where the weight provided is not correct.

The following steps are taken to select the best estimate for product contents weights:

Product content weights are checked category by category and are marked as requiring adjustment where the content weight is missing or if it is high or low compared to the category average.

For all items requiring adjustment, items are checked on a sub-category basis and either the category or sub-category average is used based on expert judgement.

To minimise the risk associated with such estimates, categories with the largest number of waste items are prioritised and checked in more detail as these have the greatest impact on the total waste.

In addition, within each category, the products with the highest number of wasted units are checked manually one-by-one as these can also have a significant impact on the total waste tonnage.

The same method is used to measure the tonnage of donation as well as the total tonnage of food sold.

* It is assumed that 1 L is equivalent to 1 Kg where product content weights are listed as volumes.

Food waste intensity figures

0.9% of food was wasted in our Central European operations. This figure represents our food waste per food sales by weight. The sales weight is measured using the same method for food waste: the number of units sold is multiplied by the same per unit weight used in the calculation described above.

Reporting against our target

In CE we have an ambition that no food that is safe for human consumption will go to waste from our Central European retail operations. This is defined as out of code food waste except for food that cannot be donated by law or because of food safety issues.

Restatement of food waste figures

In 2018 we restated the total food waste figure for financial year 2016/17. This was due to an error in the amount of food surplus sent to animal feed in Hungary. The corrected figure is stated below along with other reporting years.

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